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Summary Sociology AS level - Childhood
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Very thorough notes on the childhood section of the AS level Sociology Family Unit. They're detailed and beautifully presented.
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Childhood The social significance of divisions based on age groups.
Childhood as a concept that is socially constructed.
Class, ethnicity and gender as factors affecting the experience and status of childhood, youth and
older age groups.
Assess the view that the concept of childhood is socially constructed.
Explain and assess the view that childhood is a time when children are free from the pressures of
adulthood.
Explain and assess the view that childhood is disappearing.
Childhood as a social construct:
The social construction of childhood refers to the idea that what is meant by ‘childhood’
differs between societies and depends on time, place and culture.
Evidence supporting the idea that childhood is a social construction is found in three main areas:
1. The cross cultural perspective; the differing experiences (status, responsibilities and treatment) of
children in different contemporary cultures/societies.
To some, childhood is merely a natural stage of life; what is expected of children and the social
roles they take are seen as the product of biological age.
However, social constructionist theorists disagree with this. They argue that if childhood was
simply a biological category, we would expect every society to see it in a similar way. But looking
at childhood from a cross-cultural perspective shows that this is not the case. There’s a wide
variety of childhoods that exist across the world & Western societies’ contemporary
distinctive ideas about childhood are in fact not universal and thus the notion of childhood is
viewed as a social construct.
Illustrating this is the differences in the experiences of children worldwide.
Whilst in the West ‘childhood’ is associated with happiness and growth for children, this isn’t
the case everywhere.
For instance, Wyness notes that in Mexico, until recently, most children did paid work.
According to Amnesty International, there are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers in more
than 30 countries including Congo, Sudan and Afghanistan. Some of them are victims of
torture and are beaten to make sure they obey orders. Some children have also been forced to
kill members of their own families, and female child soldiers have been raped or used to
provide sexual services.
Ruth Bennedict found wide cultural variations in the roles of children. For instance, in Samoa
children are expected to perform dangerous sand physically demanding tasks.
Amongst Australian Aborigines in the 1920s children were not discouraged from playing
sexual games.
Bennedict concluded that compared to Western societies some other societies differentiated
much less between adulthood and childhood.
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